To make a long story short, if a state crime is not always a crime of violence, then, if a person is convicted of it, it only counts as a crime of violence if the court documents from the prior conviction conclusively establish that what the person did was a crime of violence.

(2) Intentionally or knowingly causes another to reasonably fear imminent bodily injury; or

(3) Intentionally or knowingly causes physical contact with another and a reasonable person would regard the contact as extremely offensive or provocative.

To be a crime of violence for federal purposes, an offense has to involve the intentional use of force or the threatened use of force. See 18 U.S.C. S 924(e). Because you can violate Tennessee's assault statute by recklessly hurting someone, it doesn't involve any intentional act. So it is possible to violate this statute and not commit a crime of violence under federal law.

Because sometimes a Tennessee aggravated assault is a federal crime of violence, the sentencing court is to look at the court records to see if they conclusively establish that the person pled guilty to something that meets the federal standard.

Here, though, Mr. McMurray entered an Alford plea - he, basically, pled no contest, not guilty. He made no factual admission; he merely consented to a conviction.

The Sixth Circuit said that such a plea cannot be used to support any finding about the facts of what he pled guilty to.

Because there were no facts about what Mr. McMurray pled guilty to in the record sufficient to show that he committed a crime of violence, as the term is used in federal law, his prior conviction for aggravated assault was not properly labeled a crime of violence.

What this meant for Mr. McMurray is that he was not an Armed Career Criminal. Instead of a 15-year mandatory minimum, his new federal conviction for being a felon in possession carried a statutory maximum of ten years.

The case was sent back to the sentencing judge for a new sentence, with the new statutory maximum.

* You can also commit aggravated assault in Tennessee if you're a parent and you fail to protect your kids from an aggravated assault, which strikes me as such a tremendously sad thing to think about that I am now going to stop thinking about it.